hould (we) be (we), or could it be
One-tenth (two others) and nine-tenths (we)?

Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes:
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whispered then
You may hear to-day in a hundred men.

O lady and lover, now faint and far
Your images hover--and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone--
Edwards and Dorothys--all their own--
A goodly record for time to show
Of a syllable whispered so long ago.

[Applause prolonged.]

I give you: "The memory of Dorothy Jackson, born Dorothy Quincy, to
whose choice of the right monosyllable we owe the presence of our
honored guest and all that his life has achieved for the welfare of the
community." [Great applause and cheers.]

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.

SONS OF HARVARD WHO FELL IN BATTLE

[Speech of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, son of the "Autocrat," at the
Harvard Alumni Dinner, at Cambridge, June 25, 1884.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ALUMNI:--Another day than
this has been consecrated to the memories of the war. On that day we
think not of the children of the university or the city, hardly, even,
of the children whom the State has lost, but of a mighty brotherhood
whose parent was our common country. To-day the college is the centre of
all our feeling, and if we refer to the war it is in connection with the
college, and not for its own sake that we do so. What then did the
college do to justify our speaking of the war now? She sent a few
gentlemen into the field, who died there becomingly. I know of nothing
more. The great forces which ensured the North success would have been
at work even if those men had been absent. Our means of raising money
and troops would not have been less, I dare say. The great qualities of
the race, too, would still have been there. The greatest qualities,
after all, are those of a man, not those of a gentleman, and neither
North nor South needed colleges to learn them.

And yet--and yet I think we all feel that, to us, at least, the war
would seem less beautiful and inspiring, if those few gentlemen had not
died as they did. Look at yonder portrait[7] and yonder bust[8] and tell
me if stories such as they commemorate do not add a glory to the bare
fact that the stron